Surprise Proposal - An aviation love story

update: We are now married! She talked me into helping with her with real estate. Here is a link to our family business: myhomequarters.com

Here is an airpark hangar home video we shot together. Let us know what you think!

   • Airpark Home Tour - Spruce Creek Airpark F...  

——

Covid-19 rocked my world and punched me straight back to the helicopter industry days before I was about to start a career at a major airline. Most of you know that I had one foot in each sector anyhow. I moonlight as a Chief Flight Instructor at a fantastic flight school in Texas, where they hired Leah, a brilliant Aviation Business Developer, last year. Leah and I were assigned to host a "Covid-19 Webinar" together and have been pretty much talking ever since.

Time to re-route my favorite helicopter to Texas, so I can bend a knee where Leah fell in love with aviation - at a grass airstrip near her multi-generational family town where she used to watch airplanes take off and land as a little girl. With the help (and approval) from her entire family and a real plane ticket for her to come and visit me in NC to keep her scent off my trail, I'll sneak into Texas undetected.

It was a race against the sun doing maintenance track and balance flights for most of the day in Ft. Worth. Leah is an ultra-productive woman and and her family all had a pretty tough time keeping her pinned down to her Grandparent's house for the day.

When she started to wax her eyebrows, Layne, her younger 21-year-old brother - being a welder and man's man - jumped in and asked her to wax his eyebrows first since I had just text him that I was departing Ft. Worth toward the house. She finished up his brows in record time and started on her own just as I began to circle overhead. The silver lining for me? At least I knew for sure that she didn't see this coming. I had told her that I was in Tennessee doing maintenance runs on a helicopter, so at least this little white-lie was partially true.

The timing couldn't have been better; just enough sunlight at golden hour to get her to the famous airpark so the ring will sparkle when I open the box. A little fun fact about Leah and I is that we never spend time on devices during golden-hour and the sunset because we spend that time enjoying the moment every day (usually apart because of our long-distance relationship). Also, this will be our first time flying in a helicopter together.

Leah, you are simply the best - for me, thank you for saying "yes”. ;)